Blood and Tears
by EstellaDoreaBlack
Summary: "I lied...I lied to you." Sometimes a case hits just a little too close to home. Post-Crimson Hat but mostly based on Throwing Fire. Team friendship, hints of RigsPelt.


**Blood and Tears  
**

**Disclaimer: **If you recognize it, it's not mine.

**This fic is rated T for mentions of suicide. If you don't like it, don't read it. ****Minor spoilers for _The Crimson Hat_, for that and context reasons I don't recommend reading this if you haven't seen the episode.  
**

"I'm sorry," Wayne Rigsby repeated for something like the hundredth time. "I'll see you soon, okay? I have to get back to work."**  
**

He hung up his phone and couldn't help a sigh of relief. Sarah had just let him have it in the worst way for letting her think he was dead. He knew she'd forgive him soon enough, but in the meantime his eardrums were set to take a pounding.

A soft sniff nearby caught his attention, and he whirled to find the source of the noise. The first think he saw was red. Specifically, red hair. Only one person in CBI - really, only one person he'd ever met - had hair that exact color.

"Grace?"

She looked up at him, and he could see that her eyes were red, her face streaked with tears. Instantly, he closed the gap between them. "Grace? What's wrong?"

"I'm sorry. I thought I was alone."

Seeing as Sarah had been doing the vast majority of the talking on his call, he could understand that. "So? What's bothering you?"

"I'm sorry," she said again. "This case really got to me is all."

"I know." He rubbed her shoulder gently. "Wainwright was a good guy. We're all going to feel it."

"Not the Red John stuff. The guy in the alley. I mean, we'll never even know who he was."

Wayne had nearly forgotten about the man whose body had been so crucial in laying their trap. "Yeah, that's sad."

"Why do people do things like that? Don't they realize it could all be okay if they'd just hold on?"

He was quickly getting the sense that there was more to this than she was letting on. "What's this really about?"

"Nothing. It's just - I get so angry at people who do this sort of thing." Her breath hitched. "I'm sorry, Wayne. I shouldn't keep you. I'm sure Lisbon's waiting."

He wasn't falling for that. "You're not going to get rid of me that easily. Why don't you tell me what's going on?"

Grace knew she wouldn't be able to try anything else to get him to leave now, and if she told him flat-out to leave he'd probably just see that as one more reason to stay. She'd have to make some excuse, something. She drew in a shaky breath, but that breath triggered a sob and then she was crying again, harder than before, her sobs seeming to tear her apart from the inside out.

Strong arms wrapped around her, and she leaned into Wayne's strong chest as he held her. "Shh," he whispered. "Shh, it's okay, I'm here, I'm sorry. What is it, Grace? What is it?"

"I lied," was the first thing she gasped out. "I lied to you."

"What are you talking about?"

"I told you -" she choked off. With an incredible effort of will, she managed to start again and finish this time. "I told you I don't have a sister."

It hit him like a speeding train. He remembered well the day she had told him that. They had confronted a suicidal woman at the graveside of her son, and Grace had talked her down, telling the woman an emotional story about how her sister had killed herself, how selfish she had been to do so. When he had asked, she had told him she didn't have a sister.

"I guess it was more or less true," she sobbed. "I don't have a sister anymore. I haven't had a sister since I was eleven."

He held her close. "Tell me."

She gulped, trying to compose herself. "Melody was five years older than me, my protector, my best friend. I loved her so much. Everyone loved her. My parents did too - right up until the Big Announcement," she added bitterly. She felt his hands against her back, silently urging her to continue. "You see, my sister was a lesbian. And in a small town like ours, that was a big don't."

"What happened?" he whispered.

"My father was _so_ angry. He yelled at her for over an hour while she stood there and cried and I hid in the closet the whole time. I was eight - I had never seen him scream like that. Mother disguised it as concern, but she was every bit as hateful towards Mel as he was. They wouldn't let her go out with friends after that, barely let her do anything but go to school. I was the only person she could talk to. She cried all the time, even in the few short and secret relationships she somehow managed to have.

"Then one day when I was in fifth grade, she seemed happier. I thought things were finally getting better for her. Two days later, just before I left for school, she hugged me and said 'I'm sorry, Grace.' Mother rushed me out the door before I had a chance to ask what she was sorry for." Another sob tore loose, and a fresh flood of tears with it, but nothing could stop her talking now that she'd started. "I came home to find my sister lying on the couch, covered in blood. The knife she'd used to cut her own throat was still in her hand."

"Oh, _Grace_," he whispered, near tears himself as she wept in his arms. "_Grace._"

"I hated her for so long," she sobbed. "Hated her for leaving me, for being so selfish."

A flash of movement made him look up, and he realized that the entire rest of the team was standing in the hall. And judging by the expressions on Jane and Lisbon's faces, they'd been there long enough to hear most or all of the horrific story.

Grace must have felt him stiffen against her, because she looked up too, pulled away, forcibly choking off most of her emotional display. She tried and failed to speak several times.

Lisbon crossed the room in record time and took the younger woman in her arms. "Oh, God," she said as she held her close, "I am so sorry."

Grace clung to her boss and began to bawl again. Wayne hugged her from behind, and she felt a hand on each of her shoulders. She didn't have the strength to find out who was on which side. She just sobbed.

After what seemed like forever, her tears dried up. She felt weak, her legs watery, and just standing seemed a great effort. She was tired, so tired. Arms, she didn't know whose arms, took hold of her, helped her move through the hall, set her down on a soft surface. _Jane's couch._ That reminded her, and she looked up, searching for the blond consultant. She couldn't see him. "Where's Jane?"

"Here." He spoke from the doorway, and she turned to see him walking towards her. "I thought you could use a cup of tea."

"You knew," she whispered, taking the tea from him almost on autopilot. "How?"

"Well, I knew you'd suffered some sort of childhood trauma," he said gently, with a compassion in his voice many people would have thought he was incapable of. "It's written all over you. And I knew you'd lost someone close to you because -"

"My cousin," she finished.

"She let you talk to your sister, didn't she? That's why it's so important to you that her gift is real." He knew that. He knew what it must mean to her. He vividly remembered how even he, ever the skeptic, had been brought to tears by Kristina Frye's "message" from his wife.

Grace nodded tearfully. Jane took the teacup from her and set it on the table before gently putting his arms around her. Tears rose to her eyes at this gesture. Patrick Jane, who seemed so tentative about touching people, breaking that rule for the sake of giving her comfort.

He stepped back after a moment but hovered nearby like the others, a protective force. At some point during everything that was going on around her, she fell asleep.

Wayne notice the second her head drooped. He took the cup from her again and helped her lie down. Lisbon brought a chair up next to the couch and took Grace's hand as she sat.

It was Jane who said what was in the back of everyone's mind. "We've got one screwed up set of families on this team."

It was true. They had always assumed that if one of them had had a normal childhood it was Grace. There was Rigsby, whose mother had died before he could remember her and whose father had been abusive, Cho, who had been estranged from his parents after joining a gang, Lisbon, whose father had become an abusive alcoholic after her mother's death and who had killed himself, but not before nearly killing her and the brothers she had been forced to raise.

And him. Like Rigsby, he had lost his mother before he really had her. His father hadn't really known how to be a parent; he had been only an asset, a commodity to the man. The first person to ever really care for him had been a beautiful girl named Angela Ruskin who had helped him run away. And then he had gotten her and his baby killed too.

Lisbon's voice was choked when she spoke. "We're a family now."

**I was intrigued by the moment in _Throwing Fire_ when Grace has to talk down the suicidal suspect, and hated that they copped out (no pun intended) in the next scene by having her say it was all a lie. I thought, what if it wasn't and she was just saying that to avoid awkward questions?**

**This story contains references to _The Crimson Hat_, _Throwing Fire_, _Bloodshot, Seeing Red_, the pilot, and a few episodes I can't remember discussing the team's respective histories.  
**

**Please Review.  
**


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